High Court Rules for Regulators
In Case About Double Jeopardy

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court ruled that people fined by federal agencies can also be criminally prosecuted for the same misdeeds that led to their civil fines.

The decision was a victory for federal regulators, who had chafed for nearly a decade under a 1989 high-court ruling that limited prosecutions in such cases. In the earlier decision, the justices had made it easier to show a violation of the Constitution's double-jeopardy clause when someone was prosecuted after paying a stiff civil fine. That provision, part of...